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'How was I supposed to feel?'

It's a few years after the divorce, you're better off apart and maybe you're even in a new relationship. But then your ex dies. It can't be that traumatic, can it? Here two women describe the pain and confusion of grieving for someone you're no longer with

"One Saturday in September 2006, Devon and Cornwall police phoned me to say a yacht had been found off Mullion Cove in Cornwall, with the engine running. On board were a man's passport, wallet and personal possessions. My name was in the back of the passport as the emergency contact.

"I had been divorced from its owner for four years. My ex-husband, David, had just fulfilled a lifelong dream of buying a yacht and was planning to sail around the coast of Britain. Now he had seemingly disappeared.

"The following days were agonising. I hoped not to have to tell our two children, Suzanna and Peter, anything, hoping that he had simply got into trouble and would turn up somewhere, somehow. But within a few days the local press got hold of the news, and with David's photograph on the front of the paper, I had no choice. Then, 10 days later, a body was washed up that fitted David's description. It took a further three days for David's body to be positively identified by his fingerprints.

"Suddenly I was in completely uncharted waters: how is an ex-wife meant to feel when her ex-husband dies? It was a lonely place and became lonelier and more isolated as my emotions grew more bewildering.

"My first thoughts were mainly practical ones. David's widowed mother was grief-stricken and felt unable to arrange the funeral so I offered to do it. He had led a semi-nomadic existence since our divorce, with long spells working abroad. Suddenly, I was in the best position to organise the funeral as I knew more of his friends and contacts. I was also the closest person to him who - apparently - was the least emotionally affected by his death.

"It was a strange time, speaking to friends I had had no contact with since our divorce, and it was like raking through my former life. Although we had stayed in touch, things had been fairly acrimonious. Now it seemed strange to be writing down all the best aspects of David when I didn't feel entirely positive towards him. I was also happily remarried and did wonder whether I was really the right person to write his eulogy. But there was nobody else.

"We had met in 1990 when I was a nurse and David had just come out of the army. We both loved the outdoors and within a couple of years had married, settling in North Wales running a mountaineering business.

"The following year, Suzanna was born, followed by Peter three years later. In 1996, David was offered a job as a land mine action adviser, which inevitably led to him spending time abroad and away from home. We divorced in 2002, and when David moved to work abroad we gradually saw less of him.

"It bothered me that he wasn't seeing much of the children and I also worried about the dangers involved in his work - he spent time in Iraq in 2004-5 and had been in Afghanistan and other land-mine-strewn areas of the world.

"I suppose I had always worried that he might be injured or killed through his work, and wondered how that might affect all of us. Now it had happened, so much closer to home, and here I was, writing his eulogy. With his land mines work, David had improved the lives of so many people and, as I wrote about his life, I felt sorry that the marriage hadn't been a similar success.

"There was no gut-wrenching grief, just a feeling of sadness and I really believed that that would be it emotionally.

"But when I took time off work to handle the arrangements, I began to feel so resentful at what I saw as a very 'inconvenient interruption' in my life. My subsequent feelings of guilt became wrapped up with upset and anger and at times all three were swirling round at the same time.

"Somehow, it seemed inappropriate for me to grieve over the man I had divorced four years ago. I began to worry about what my husband, Adrian, would feel about my being so involved in the funeral, and any reaction I had to David's death, especially grief. I just didn't know how I was 'supposed' to feel. Adrian was supportive but I kept many of my feelings from him because I feared it might damage our marriage in some way. That left me feeling vulnerable and anxious that things were piling up into something potentially unmanageable.

"Much of what upset me at this time was to do with the impact on the children. I felt that this was an 'OK grief' to have, a mother would naturally feel upset for her children losing their father.

"Most people would ask how the children were, or say how sad it was for them, but apart from close friends and family, few recognised how difficult it was for me. In fact, I often imagined people thinking I would be happy that David was dead. And there was a nagging sense in the back of my mind that, had the marriage had turned out well, this might never have happened. He might still have been alive.

"I did feel a sense of guilt at times at how David's life had turned out, and the possible part I had played and I wondered if my children might blame me. I also felt somehow separated from them, that they were experiencing a huge, traumatic experience that wasn't the same for me. I worried they might feel I couldn't possibly understand what they were going through.

"It was around this time that I went into counselling and finally asked, how was I supposed to feel about my ex-husband's death? It was a relief to hear that however I was feeling was OK as there is no map to any kind of grief and that it was perfectly normal not to be able to share it all with my husband. But I still didn't really fully realise that this was actually my own grief. Then, in April this year, I travelled to Cornwall to attend the inquest. I didn't have to be there but felt I needed to for the children's sake.

"It was after listening to how David had died after falling from the boat in stormy waters that it finally hit me. I began to realise that this wasn't just some kind of grief by proxy for the children's loss; it was my own very real grief at having lost someone who had been important to me. I finally realised I'd been bereaved. It wasn't just about the children and David's mother and sister, it was about me too. This was real grief for a real loss - my loss.

"For six months I had plodded on, believing I 'shouldn't' feel this bad because it was 'only my ex-husband' who had died, so much so I even sometimes wished something 'really bad' would happen so I would have a real reason or 'excuse' to feel the way I did.

"I just couldn't acknowledge the real impact David's death had had on me, partly as I didn't want to upset other people, especially Adrian, and because I didn't want to be upset myself.

"I didn't want my life to be changed or affected and I didn't want the man I had divorced to be 'back in my life' in any way, even in his death.

"But life happens and no one can control the way things turn out. And I quickly discovered that once I acknowledged my own grief, other people did too. I remember one afternoon, just lying on the bed sobbing and Adrian just lying with me, just being with me in my grief. It was a real turning point.

"I know that the death of someone with whom you have had a difficult relationship can be harder to deal with, and the grief reaction more complex. But I could never have known how hard, how complex and how confusing until I experienced it myself."

"My ex-husband, Bob, died suddenly and unexpectedly on Saturday February 23 2002. To others, the death of an ex-spouse might not seem the worst bereavement to suffer, but Bob's passing away, regardless of our divorce, has been the single most traumatic event of my life. The second most traumatic was telling our son Keir, then aged nine, that his dad was dead.

"Tell someone you are grieving for your ex-husband, and they don't really understand, because if you still loved them, why aren't you together? But even though our relationship could no longer exist as a marriage, Bob was still a big part of my life, our relationship forged through love for our son and our desire to ensure his happiness.

"When Bob took his last breath, it had been nine years since we were a couple, but I was at his bedside holding his hand. He'd been admitted into hospital in agony, but it was days until it emerged that Bob's appendix had burst. He died, aged 38, while under sedation. His body was riddled with septicaemia. Extensive surgery and massive amounts of antibiotics failed to save him.

"I stayed with Bob's body, sobbing in disbelief, until it went cold. My mum, Bob's parents, and his girlfriend of one year were also there. Our son Keir was at my parents' house with his grandad, waiting for news that Bob would be OK. I will never forget that sharp intake of breath - a shock-induced gasp - that Keir made the moment I told him his father was dead.

"I had met Bob in 1987 when I was 17 and he was 23. He was my first love and my first real boyfriend, and we moved in together after a year. By the time I was 21, we'd decided we were going to have a child. Bob adored children. We tied the knot in January 1992 when I was five months pregnant.

"There were a multitude of reasons why I ended our marriage only 18 months later, but despite much negotiation and argument, we managed to build a new connection over time. I'd be dishonest if I didn't admit that there were days when I wished Bob could be out of my life, but by the time he died we'd been very much part of each other's lives for 15 years - in good ways and bad. We still saw each other several times a week, and we had the shared bond of our child to tie us.

"Bob was the person who I relied on to do my DIY jobs; whenever he spotted something was coming apart, the next time he'd visit, he'd come with his tool kit and get it fixed. My house is a shambles these days. Bob and I attended parents' evenings at school together, as well as school plays and fairs. I took his pets to the vet when he couldn't, and as Bob didn't own a car, I ran errands and picked up shopping for him. Though we'd parted as husband and wife, we continued to spend Christmas together for the sake of our son, albeit within my extended family who invited him. (In the early years after breaking up, this irritated the hell out of me, but my 'lot' insisted Bob was part of our family so I got used to it.)

"In many respects, we were still very dependent on each other, even though we'd found new partners. It is only the other parent of your child who truly cares about them in the same way as you. It is only them who has any real interest in whether they are making friends at school, whether their chocolate buns turned out OK, or whether they were wearing socks in bed on that particularly cold night last week. And, we pretty much split the time that we each spent with Keir, having joint care of him, and often spent time chatting whenever we did a 'changeover'.

"After Bob's death, it was two years before I stopped crying on a daily basis, which has surprised people. Even now, I can find myself shedding a few silent tears. It happens less often; I have come to terms with Bob's death, but I still mourn him. People were supportive, but I think they would have been much more so had we still been together. There was little acknowledgment from anyone (other than my most immediate family) of just how great my sorrow was, or how torn apart mine and my son's lives were.

"There were many things wrapped up in my grief. I wasn't only grieving for myself; I was grieving for my son's loss as well. Seeing Keir's anguished and tear-stained face jarred at my very soul. It was agony to watch that kind of pain in your own child.

"I was also feeling suddenly alone in the world, even though I had a partner at the time. I was facing the future and my son's teenage years as a single parent. He is 15 now - a wonderful, strong and intelligent boy who I feel proud of every day, but I panicked about how he'd 'turn out' from losing his dad in such formative years. Would he cope? Would he rebel? Would he blame me and wish me dead instead? I'm happy to say none of this happened, but such feelings in those very raw, early days added to my despair and confusion.

"Many people assume that feelings die with the end of a relationship or marriage. In an 'in love' and sexual sense, they did. But in other ways they had grown. We had found a new way of being a family, and what I hadn't realised was that Bob had continued to be one of my closest allies in life. He was someone who, when it came down to it, I could really turn to in a crisis.

"Only when Bob died did I discover just how many parts of our lives were intertwined, and the extent of our renegotiated relationship. Consequently, the shock of Bob's death - regardless of his ex-husband status - was very real, very profound and very painful."

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